Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 20
ABA Regulation of Plant Response
to Biotic Stresses
Ligang Chen and Diqiu Yu
Abstract
Plants live in complicated environments in which they are obliged to
defend against a broad range of attackers. In order to protect themselves, plants
have evolved complex regulatory signaling networks where multiple hormonal
pathways antagonistically or synergistically interact and influence plant defense
responses. Beside of its prominent roles in abiotic stress tolerance, the plant hor-
mone abscisic acid (ABA) has also been emerged as crucial regulator in biotic
stresses. Accumulated studies have shown that ABA can exert both positive and
negative influence on host defense, and its efficacy is dependent on the specific
plant-attacker combination. In this chapter, we mainly focused on recent literature
dealing with the roles of ABA in modulating plant defense responses against vari-
ous attackers.
Keywords
ABA
·
Plant-pathogen interaction
·
Biotic and abiotic stress
·
Cross talk
20.1 Introduction
Being unable to escape from the surrounding complex circumstances, plants are
obligated to respond more effectively than animals to various living-threaten
stresses in order to successfully survive and reproduce. These stresses can nega-
tively or even harmfully affect the growth and productivity of plants and can be
broadly divided into two categories: abiotic and biotic. Abiotic stresses include
all the non-living environmental factors, such as water deficiency (drought),
excessive salt (salinity), threshold temperatures (from freezing to scorching),
decreased availability of essential nutrients (nutrient starvation), and variable
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